Setting a break point in native code using WinDbg is easy.
You just run the bp command with the address of the place in memory where you want to place the breakpoint.Setting a breakpoint in Managed code is a bit trickier.First of all, WinDbg is a native debugger. Until a method is JITed (JIT as in Just In Time Compilation) it doesn’t even have native code.The managed assembly might be loaded and mapped, but only after the function in JITed and its native code is generated and loaded it has a place in memory that WinDbg can set a breakpoint on to. An exception to this are Ahead of Time (AOT) compiled assemblies (assemblies which have a native image generated by ngen.exe).

The steps for setting a breakpoint in Managed code are very simple:

Find the method table handle of the class.

Find the method description handle of the method
we want to put a breakpoint on.

Place a breakpoint on the virtual address of method we want
to break into (this will only work on already JITed method whether its from AOT
or they were called once to actually get JITed).

OK, now that we understand the logical steps on how to do it, what do we actually do? (I’m using the same executable from the previous post).

!name2ee[Assembly name (including extension] [Class Full Namespace]. For example: !name2ee SyncBlkDeadLock.exe SyncBlkDeadLock.Form1. That is the class on which we want to place a breakpoint in one of its methods. The output will look like this.

!dumpmt -md [MethodTable handle that we got from the previous command]. For Example: !dumpmt -md 0x00a8543c. The output will look like this.

!dumpmd [MethodDesc handle that we got from the previous command]. For Example: !dumpmd 0x00a853d8. This is the handle for the methodSyncBlkDeadLock.Form1.Thread1Handler().The output will look like this.

In the field “Method VA” we now have th method Virtual Address and we can set a breakpoint on that address.

Quite easy, when you know what you are looking for 🙂

Remember, that this only sets a breakpoint on the function entry address, so whenever this function is called it will break (unless you point some kind of a conditional breakpoint).